Sermon prepared for
by Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor;
Text: Mark
Sermon: No Laughing Matter
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I
can’t read this passage, this gospel lesson without getting chills. To me—between Jesus’ birth and his betrayal
by Judas—this moment was one of the most dramatic and telling moments in all of
Jesus’ earthly ministry: his confrontation in Tyre with the Syrophoenician
Gentile woman, and the subsequent healing of her bedeviled daughter.
Jesus
tried (yet again) to get away for awhile.
This time he passed through the whole Galilean territory, into the
Gentile lands of Sryro-phoenicia about 40 miles northwest to the coastal town
of
It’s
not a strange journey for him to have taken.
This was the quickest way from
But
still, good Jews would have had as little as possible to do with the Gentiles while
they were in
So,
when this woman crashes the party and presents herself before Jesus and his
disciples, it truly was tense and embarrassing.
The woman, a Gentile by birth, confronted Jesus with her problem,
begging him to drive the devil from her daughter.
That’s
when Jesus said the words that have stumped and confused Bible readers ever
since. He said, “The children should be
fed first.” That is, the children of
Now,
why in the world would our Lord Jesus Christ, our perfect, sinless, and loving
Messiah, say such a horrible thing to this woman, Gentile or not?
She
was desperate, desperate not for herself, but for her daughter. Jesus turned to her, and in that statement,
he not only calls the woman, but also her daughter, a “dog.”
Ever
since seminary, I have read and heard all kinds of sermons, explanations and
Bible commentaries on this passage. Some
are sure that it’s a mis-translation.
Some try to say that Jesus used a word that actually meant, “little dog”
and was like a term of endearment. Some
say that Jesus said it with good humor, that the woman knew he was playing with
her, joking with her by using a common metaphor.
Well,
no matter how you slice it, the word “dog” was not a term of endearment. If
you look at how dogs are referred to in the Bible, it is never positive or kind. In
fact, when it was used to refer to people, it meant that they were male or
female prostitutes. It is exactly how we
use the English word today that is supposed to refer to female dogs, but we
apply it to women.
It
was a common metaphor. Jews often called Gentiles “dogs” behind
their backs... and in front of them only when they wanted to insult them.
So,
to call it a joke, or a term of “endearment,” is even more offensive. There might have been a knowing gleam in his
eye, but Jesus was not joking, and nobody was laughing.
The
only way to understand this passage is to realize that Jesus knew the strength
of woman standing in front of him. Jesus
knew that she would do and say whatever it took, for her daughter.
Jesus
also knew what was going on in the minds of his disciples and the people around
him. Jesus knew what they were already
thinking, about this woman. He knew the
word they were already thinking.
He
decided to bring it out of hiding, to say out loud, what everyone else was thinking
in one way or another, “Why take what was meant for the children of God and
throw it to dogs like you?”
When
Jesus said it, even though many people were probably smugly and quietly
thinking it, believe me, he got their attention. I have no doubt that there was complete
silence.
Then,
I can picture this woman slowly standing, looking Jesus in the eye, and then at
all those who gathered around. What
Jesus had just said out loud was the thing that so many people had said and
thought before, silently and aloud, cursing her, cursing women and men,
Gentiles, equating them with dogs.
And
she answered the curse, “Fine, you call me, call my daughter, a dog, but even
the dogs are allowed the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” Jesus was right about her. She was a powerful woman. And she had faith that came from love, a
faith strong enough to face down those opinions and people who said she wasn’t
worth it.
In
that moment, and through that woman, Jesus took all those ugly words, thoughts
and attitudes, he brought them out into the open, all in order to bring them
crashing down …through this woman, this Gentile woman. Jesus slammed the lesson home when he told
the woman that she was blessed for her words.
She would go home to find her daughter healed.
The
greatest healing was not that the girl’s devil left her. The greater healing happened in the woman and
those gathered around. A demon of
arrogance and prejudice was exposed and brought down. It was a lesson for the disciples and for all
of us.
We
know that we harbor thoughts, sometimes almost engrained and assumed about
certain people, things that would be insulting to say out loud to their faces. Christ calls us to greater honesty with
ourselves, and to see the lack of love.
We
draw lines against certain people, with certain backgrounds, or
interpretations, or denominations because we want so bad to be the special
children of God. We worry that if his
grace and forgiveness is offered too freely and to too many people, then
somehow it won’t be special anymore.
Why
are we so jealous of his grace? We
already have it…and plenty of it. It
does not lose its value in its growth and expansion; it gains it.
We
are not to try to help God define and limit the extent of his grace and forgiveness. Our job, the works that we are called to do is
to expand his gospel. We have received
mercy, and we offer mercy. We have heard
the gospel and so we spread the gospel.
If
we truly are the children at the table of God, it is only because he has lifted
us to it. Now, we need to lift
others. As freely as we have been accepted,
fed and nourished, from our Christian infancy, onward.
As
James wrote in the second lesson, we are to speak and act like those who are
just about to be judged by the law …of liberty.
In other words, we are to live and act like the people who have been
shown great love and undeserved mercy from God, with the expansiveness, the
patience, the mercy, compassion and love of Christ.
James
Moffat was right on when he once wrote that: “A teacher or preacher may give an
eloquent study or sermon on the gospel…but when the sermon is done, it is not
done; something remains to be done by those who heard it.”
God’s
goal does not stop at our salvation. We
have been saved for a reason. The reason
is simple and basic. We have been given
mercy so that we can share our experiences of God’s mercy and love with others.
As
I said last week in the Morning Promise service, maybe we haven’t been clear
enough in the past. Let me be clear
now. You are a missionary wherever you
are. It is the nature of being
Christian. You have heard the message of
God’s mercy and your salvation, but that message cannot stop here.
What
Jesus said to the Syrophoenician woman was no laughing matter, but it led to a
proclamation of great joy that you and I need to live out, spread and invite
others into it. That is our job as
Christians: to oppose hateful words, thoughts and prejudices, and, instead, to
spread God’s forgiveness, patience, and invitation as wide as possible.
“A
teacher or preacher can give a great study or sermon on the gospel…but when the
message is done, it is not done; something remains to be done by those who
heard it.”
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